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Running head: THE EFFECT OF TWITTER ON SOCIAL PRESENCE IN ONLINE LEARNING 1

The Effect of Twitter on Social Presence in Online Learning

Terrence M. Shaneyfelt

Boise State University

THE EFFECT OF TWITTER ON SOCIAL PRESENCE IN ONLINE LEARNING2

Abstract

Social presence theory is commonly used to describe and understand how people interact

in online learning environments. It has evolved from being primarily a quality of the medium to

being embodied in the perceptions of learners. Several scales have been developed to measure

social presence.

Social networking tools are being used more frequently in both online and face-to-face

learning environments. Encouraging interaction has been shown to promote social presence. A

primary role of social networking tools is to facilitate interaction between people. Thus, it

follows that social networking tools should improve social presence. In this paper I review the

evolution of social presence theory and examine the effect that Twitter has on social presence in

online learning environments.


The Effect of Twitter on Social Presence in Online Learning

Online learning is popular. According to the National Center for Education Statistics

(2012), in the Fall of 2012 11% of undergraduate students and 22% of graduate students were

enrolled in exclusively online courses and 14.2% and 7.8%, respectively, were enrolled in some,

but not all, online courses. In an informal survey I conducted of second year medical students at

the University Of Alabama School Of Medicine, 80% reported taking at least one online course

prior to medical school.

Student persistence in an online course is a measure of satisfaction in an online course.

Hart (2012) reviewed the literature on factors associated with student persistence in online

courses. She found that satisfaction with online learning, a sense of belonging to the learning

community, motivation, peer, and family support, time management skills, and increased

communication with the instructor were all associated with completing an online course. Two

elements, a sense of belonging to the learning community and communication with the

instructor, are important elements of making an online course similar to a face-to-face course.

They are also elements of social presence in an online course.

Social Presence Theory

Despite the passage of almost forty years since its initial description, a unified theory of

social presence has been elusive (Kehrwald, 2008). Social presence theory has evolved from

being primarily a quality of the medium to being embodied in the perceptions of the learner

(Lowenthal, 2009). Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) defined social presence as the “degree

of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal


relationships” (p. 65). They felt social presence was a quality of the communications medium

itself and that different media could convey varying degrees of social presence.

Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) defined social presence as the “degree to which a person

is perceived as ‘real’ in mediated communication.” They developed the Social Presence Scale

and applied it to students participating in a virtual computer conference. They found that social

presence explained 58% of the variance in predicting learner satisfaction. They showed that

different students using the same medium sensed different levels of social presence. Thus,

Gunawardena and Zittle moved the theory of social presence away from a technology-focused

perspective to one of a personal perspective.

There are two concepts of social presence (Tu and McIsaac, 2002). Intimacy is a

function of eye contact, body language and positioning, topic of conversation, etc. Immediacy is

the psychological distance between communicators. It is both verbal and nonverbal. The more

information transmitted the smaller the psychological distance. In computer mediated

communications (CMC) missing nonverbal cues can be supplied by emoticons.

There are three dimensions of social presence (Tu, 2000). Social context is

multidimensional and includes social processes, social relationships among participants,

perceived privacy, and types of tasks. Online communications refers to the language used to

express oneself and communicate online and a participant’s technical skills in communicating

online. The activities in which users engage with each other and the timeliness of their responses

constitutes interactivity. Tu argues that online course designers should consider these dimensions

when designing a course. See the Figure from Tu and McIssac (2002) for relationships between

the concepts and dimensions of social presence.


Tu and McIssac (2002) studied their conceptualization of social presence utilizing their

previously developed Social Presence and Privacy Questionnaire (also referred to as CMC

Questionnaire). Factor analysis of CMC Questionnaire items found that five factors explained

77% of the variance: social context, online communications, interactivity, system privacy, and

feeling of privacy. Their qualitative analysis found social presence to be more complicated than

previously thought. They found twenty three variables (Table 2 of their paper) that impacted

social presence and identified system privacy as a new dimension of social presence. Based on

this study they defined social presence as “the degree of feeling, perception, and reaction of

being connected by CMC to another intellectual entity through a text-based encounter.”

Rourke, Anderson, Garrison and Archer (1999) introduced the Community of Inquiry

Model that posits that learning occurs through the interaction of three components: cognitive

presence, teacher presence and social presence. They defined social presence as “the ability of

learners to project themselves socially and emotionally in a community of inquiry.” They


identified three categories of communicative responses that contribute to social presence:

interactive responses (provide evidence that others are attending, such as referencing other’s

posts), affective responses (expressions of emotions, feelings, and mood), and cohesive

responses (build and sustain a sense of group commitment using such things as greetings and

referring to others by name). This study advanced the concept of social presence from that of

individual perception to being situated in a group of learners.

Teacher presence is a component of the community of inquiry model. Some of the roles

of the teacher in this model are to facilitate discourse, motivate, and provide feedback and

encouragement. The question arises as to what impact teacher presence has on social presence.

Swan and Shih (2005) studied the relative importance of the perceived social presence of peers

compared to that of instructors. They found that social presence of the instructor was

significantly correlated with perceived learning (correlation coefficient 0.74) and satisfaction

with the instructor (0.81). Social presence of peers was also correlated with perceived learning

(0.70). While the difference in correlations are small, this study suggests that teacher social

presence is at least as important, if not slightly more important, than peer social presence in

online courses.

Measuring Social Presence

Just as there is no agreed upon definition of social presence theory so too is there no

agreed upon instrument to measure social presence. While several instruments have been

developed to measure social presence, they are adaptations of three main instruments.


The Social Presence Scale (Appendix 1) contains fourteen self-report five point Likert

scale items that “embodied the concept of immediacy” (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997). The

internal consistency of the scale was good with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88.

Social Presence Indicators (Appendix 2) are twelve indicators that reveal the level of

social presence in an online community of inquiry (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison & Archer,

1999). These indicators were designed to analyze transcripts of CMC to detect affective

responses, interactive responses, and cohesive responses. High scores indicate that the online

environment is “warm and collegial” while low scores indicate that it is “cold and impersonal.”

Aggregate interrater reliability was good at 0.95 but varied by the indicator as some, such as use

of humor, required more subjective interpretation.

Social Presence and Privacy Questionnaire was developed by Tu (2002) because he felt

previous instruments were too general or were missing important variables. This instrument

contains seventeen social presence and thirteen privacy items, each with a five point Likert scale.

The five factors that emerged from factor analysis (social context, online communications,

interactivity, system privacy, and feeling of privacy) had Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.74 to

0.85 and accounted for 82% of the variance. The specific items on the questionnaire are not

listed in the paper but can be found here:

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~ct68/Publication/2006/CMCQ2006.pdf

Effect of Twitter on Enhancing Social Presence

Creating social presence in online courses has been related to student satisfaction

(Gunawardena and Little, 1997), development of a community of learners (Rourke, Anderson,

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~ct68/Publication/2006/CMCQ2006.pdf


Garrison & Archer, 1999), and perceived learning (Richardson and Swan, 2003). Students rate

social interaction and connection as important attributes of an online course (Dunlap and

Lowenthal, 2009). Therefore, it is important to find ways to establish and maintain social

presence in online courses.

A main factor that has driven the evolution of social presence theory is the evolution of

technology. Students are no longer limited to course management system text-based discussion

boards to interact and socialize. Students now have a broad range of social software

communication tools including text and video messaging, weblogs, podcasts, wikis, social

bookmarking, internet forums, and social networks. Social software can be useful in online

education to facilitate creating knowledge, communicating, sharing resources, and community

building.

Social networking tools are commonly used by students. According to the Pew Research

Center, as of January 2014, 89% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use social networking sites (Pew,

n.d. a). Facebook was the most popular site with 71% of online adults using the service in 2014

while Twitter was used by 23% (Pew, n.d. b). Twitter is a multiplatform microblogging tool.

According to its website, “Twitter is your window to the world. Get real time updates about what

matters to you” (Twitter, n.d.). Twitter enables just-in-time, life-like communication where users

can share, collaborate, ask questions, create, etc. wherever they want, whenever they want and on

whatever device they want. Thus, Twitter could enhance social presence in online courses by

providing students opportunities to connect with other students and teachers and be perceived as

“real.”


Twitter has been shown to promote social presence in a traditional face-to-face course for

undergraduates (Wakefield, Warren, & Alsobrook, 2011). Twitter was utilized as a tool for

required class discussions. A survey instrument was developed specifically for this study and

contained three subscales: social learning community (Cronbach’s alpha 0.93), comfortable

online communicator (alpha 0.81), and engaged student (alpha 0.80). The variables sense of

community and interactive learning were highly correlated (correlation coefficient 0.9) and

explained 90% of the variance of social learning community. The authors concluded that Twitter

strongly promotes social presence. They further found that Twitter was viewed by approximately

half of the students as useful for improving learning.

Few studies were found evaluating the impact of Twitter on social presence in online

courses. None of the identified studies utilized any of the social presence instruments described

above but they did evaluate elements previously shown to be associated with social presence.

Thoms (2012) incorporated Twitter into an online learning environment for an online

information systems undergraduate course. Twitter was used to “enhance the blogging

experience.” It was used to retrieve course content, microblog about student blogs and course

content, and provide feedback about content. The majority of students on a precourse survey

agreed or strongly agreed that interaction, collaboration, information exchange, and community

would be important aspects of the online course. Furthermore, 72% of students rated their

experience using Twitter in the course as positive. Despite this, after using Twitter during the

course only approximately 30% of students felt that Twitter actually increased interaction (25%

felt it didn’t) and approximately 40% felt it was excellent for building community (15% felt it

wasn’t). The majority of students, though, did feel that Twitter helped them explore and bring


new information to the course not found in the course textbook. The methodology used by

Thoms was suboptimal. He used Twitter as a broadcast tool and not as an interactive tool.

Students used Twitter hours or days after other students Tweets or blog posts. Students were not

required to Tweet immediately in response to other Tweets or blog posts. I wonder had he

designed the use of Twitter to foster real time exchange if the results of this study would have

been different.

Munoz, et al (2014) evaluated the effect of Twitter on social presence in a multi-ethnic

group of undergraduate pre-service teachers. Students were divided into three groups: online

Blackboard discussion group, online Twitter group, and face-to-face Twitter group. The online

groups were enrolled in the same six-week long online summer class while the face-to-face

group was enrolled in a semester long class. Blackboard and Twitter were used to discuss field

observations. A ten question yes/no survey (not included in the paper) was used to assess student

experiences. Student postings were analyzed to identify themes. Analysis of student postings

revealed five categories: field experience (31% of posts), emotions, relationships with

cooperating teachers, class related, and relationships between students (36%). The online Twitter

group was more likely than the other two groups to communicate with the instructor. Students in

both Twitter groups reported greater feelings that students cared about each other (88% vs 76%

in the Blackboard group). All groups felt a high degree of being connected to others in the course

(75-80%). The analysis of postings demonstrated that the postings of students in the online

Twitter group were more involved and affable than those of the face-to-face Twitter group,

perhaps because the face-to-face group could ask questions and interact with each other during

class time. A contradiction was seen between post analysis and students surveys. When


surveyed, students in the online Twitter group felt less connected to others and felt their needs as

learners were not being completely met. The authors postulated that perhaps Hispanic and

minority students’ perception of social presence differs from that of White students.

Thoms and Eryilmaz (2015) redesigned the online learning environment from Thoms’

previous study to more seamlessly incorporate Twitter (Thoms, 2012). Students from two

sections (one purely online and one blended) of an information systems course were required to

contribute weekly to Twitter and to an online discussion board based on topics created by the

instructor. The majority of students felt that Twitter increased interaction (76% of online and

60% of blended students) and increased learning (64% and 70%, respectively). Twitter was also

viewed as an excellent tool for building course community (84% and 74%, respectively). The

online discussion board was rated slightly higher for increasing interaction (84% and 87%,

respectively), increasing learning (69% and 91%, respectively), and building course community

(74% and 78%, respectively). No statistical analysis was done comparing these tools.

Conclusion

In summary, these studies seem to show that Twitter can be useful for discovering new

information, increasing communication and interactions with peers and instructors, and

improving emotional bonds and connections between students. Thus, Twitter can be used as a

tool to enhance social presence.

The evidence base for the effects of Twitter on social presence in online learning is

limited by few studies and small numbers of participants in the individual studies. Furthermore,

previously developed social presence instruments were not used in any of the studies.


More studies are needed to better define the role of social media in enhancing social

presence. Twitter is limited to 140 characters and is not popular with younger students (Pew

Research Center, n.d. b). Other platforms like text messaging or Google Hangouts messaging

might be more useful to overcome these limitations and be more consistent with how students

currently communicate with each other.

References

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Gunawardena, C. N., & Zittle, F. J. (1997). Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a

computer‐mediated conferencing environment. American journal of distance education,

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review of the literature. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 11(1), 19-42.

Kehrwald, B. (2008). Understanding social presence in text-based online learning environments.

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Lowenthal, P. R. (2009). The evolution and influence of social presence theory on online

learning. In T. T. Kidd (Ed.), Online education and adult learning: New frontiers for

teaching practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.


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Urban Education, 11(2), 57-69.

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http://www.http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2014023

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Thoms, B. (2012). Student perceptions of microblogging: Integrating Twitter with blogging to

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Appendix 1

1. Messages on GlobalEd were impersonal.

2. CMC is an excellent medium for social interaction.

3. I felt comfortable conversing through this text-based medium.

4. I felt comfortable introducing myself on GlobalEd.

5. The introductions enabled me to form a sense of online community.

6. I felt comfortable participating in GlobalEd discussions.

7. The moderators created a feeling of an online community.

8. The moderators facilitated discussions in the GlobalEd conference.

9. Discussions using the medium of CMC tend to be more impersonal than face-to-face

discussions.

10. CMC discussions are more impersonal than audio teleconference discussions.

11. CMC discussions are more impersonal than video teleconference discussions.


12. I felt comfortable interacting with other participants in the conference.

13. I felt that my point of view was acknowledged by other participants in GlobalEd.

14. I was able to form distinct individual impressions of some GlobalEd participants even

though we communicated only via a text-based medium.

Appendix 2

Affective indicators: expressions of emotions, use of humor, self-disclosure

Interactive indicators: continuing a thread, quoting from others’ messages, referring explicitly

to others’ messages, asking questions, complimenting and expressing appreciation, expressing

agreement

Cohesive indicators: vocatives, addresses or refers to the group using inclusive pronouns,

phatics and salutations

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